Bad Day at the Vulture Club

by Vaseem Khan

  But Sheriwal was otherwise occupied at present, and Chopra could not wait for her to bulldoze her way into Karma Holdings for the information he sought.

  Fortunately, there was more than one way to milk a cow, as Chopra’s late father had often been fond of saying. (Chopra himself had never understood this. As far as he could determine the only way to milk Layla, the cross-eyed and vicious old dairy cow that his father had kept back in their village in Jarul, was to approach her when she was at her most torpid, grab her by the teats, pull as hard as you could, and hope to hell she didn’t kick your teeth in.)

  Having left Ganesha in the MCA lobby, happily gurgling his trunk in the fountain that had recently been installed there, Chopra made his way up in the elevator to the sixteenth floor.

  Here, in a relatively plush reception – by the standards of most government offices – he asked to meet with one Ajay Rangoon, a bright young MCA employee who had helped him with his recent investigation into the death of an American tycoon at the city’s most prominent hotel, the Grand Raj Palace.

  When Rangoon arrived, he was sporting a heinous new haircut, with three stripes mowed down one side of his head, the rest dyed blond and pulled over into a curtain that obscured half of his face. The haircut was such an affront to common decency that Chopra was left momentarily speechless.

  Rangoon appeared not to notice. ‘Mr Chopra!’ he beamed enthusiastically. ‘How nice to see you again.’

  His one visible eye blinked in welcome.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Chopra stuttered, unable to take his own eyes from the offending coiffure. He shook himself back to the task at hand. This was modern India, after all, ground zero for every MTV and pop-culture innovation – good or bad – that swept in from the west. There were probably worse hairstyles loose on the streets of Mumbai, though Chopra hoped never to encounter one. ‘I require your assistance.’

  ‘We are here to serve,’ said Rangoon pleasantly. ‘Please tell me what you require.’

  Quickly, Chopra explained.

  ‘But that is very straightforward,’ said Rangoon, as if disappointed that Chopra had not set a greater challenge for his prodigious skills. He led his visitor inside, to a bank of computers, fell into a seat, flicked back his curtain of hair, then began to hack away at the keyboard.

  In short order, he printed out a sheaf of documents, led Chopra to a meeting room, then explained what he had discovered. ‘The company that you are interested in, Karma Holdings, is a shell company. This man John Reddy, the managing director, is one of a number of what we call “nominee” office bearers. The actual “owners” of the company are other companies; quite a few of them, in fact.’ He ran his fingers down a list of a dozen corporate names, none of which meant anything to Chopra.

  ‘Can you find out the details of these other companies? I mean, who owns them?’

  ‘I can try,’ said Rangoon. ‘But you have to understand that shell companies by their very nature are secretive. In fact, it is only in the past few years that the government has attempted to crack down on them. They have been used extensively for money laundering, tax avoidance and as fronts for illegal activities. But now, with the demonetisation initiative, the central government has decided enough is enough. It has recently allowed us to share information with the tax office which has made it a lot easier to track such entities. Nevertheless, it will take some time for me to get the details of all these companies. You may wish to wait downstairs.’

  Chopra went down to check on Ganesha, then took the elephant with him to a hotel café further along the road, where he ordered a fresh lime juice for himself and a bucket of the same for his ward.

  Together, they watched the passing traffic on Marine Drive, one of Mumbai’s busiest boulevards, a curving, four-kilometre stretch of palm-lined promenade that meandered around the bay, and was clogged, day and night, with locals and tourists alike.

  A donkey cart passed by, hauling a load of bricks. A wiry youth sitting on the bricks whipped at the donkey with a switch. The donkey, head down in the sweltering heat, tongue lolling, nostrils flared grimly, seemed on the verge of collapse. The load it was hauling was far too heavy for its lean and undernourished frame.

  Chopra simmered with anger.

  At any given moment, this same scene was replayed a million times across the country; the unthinking cruelty, the brutal manner in which men treated the beasts of burden they employed aroused a rage within him that he found difficult to contain.

  And then he realised that he did not have to.

  He rose from his seat, marched out into the road, and hauled the shocked young thug from his perch. He picked up the switch, flexed it between his hands, then whacked the oaf around his buttocks. The boy leapt a foot off the ground, yelping with pain. ‘I suppose you did not enjoy that,’ said Chopra. ‘What gives you the right to inflict such pain on this dumb animal?’

  ‘Have you gone mad?’ yelled the boy. ‘I shall call the police!’

  Chopra took out his ID card and pushed it against the boy’s nose. ‘Go ahead. Do you know what the sentence is for animal cruelty?’

  The boy looked askance at the crowd that had materialised, as if by magic, around them. This was better than a free ticket to the circus.

  ‘Go on. Give him another whack,’ said a dumpy woman. ‘Kids these days don’t know they’re born.’

  ‘If I had a rupee for every time my father gave me the cane, I’d be . . . a moderately wealthy man,’ opined a gummy elder struggling with grocery bags.

  ‘Look at that poor donkey. He’s on his last legs.’ A tall woman in jeans and sunglasses glared at the boy. ‘Shame on you.’

  ‘But it’s not my fault,’ wailed the object of their collective ire. ‘If I don’t get this load to the kiln, my boss will fire me. Then who will feed my mother and two sisters?’

  ‘He’s got a point,’ admitted the first woman.

  This, thought Chopra, was the subcontinent’s essential dilemma.

  It was easy for a man like himself to judge. Fate had been kind to him. He could afford the luxury of a conscience, of high-minded morals. But for those at the bottom of the pile, eking out a living on the mean streets of Mumbai was a daily struggle. The fate of one donkey rarely factored into the equation.

  He looked down at Ganesha, who looked back up at him with solemn eyes.

  Chopra threw the switch away.

  ‘But how will I make the donkey go without it?’ wailed the boy.

  ‘Use an aubergine on a rod,’ advised the old man.

  ‘Don’t you mean a carrot?’ said the woman beside him.

  ‘It has never been empirically proven that a carrot works better than any other vegetable,’ said the man, with an air of superiority.

  Chopra considered the problem. Then he took out his phone and made a call.

  Twenty minutes later a haulage van arrived in a cloud of exhaust fumes that almost finished off the poor donkey. Chopra explained the situation, and paid the bemused driver. In short order, the bricks were transferred to the van, and it sped off to make the delivery.

  The boy mounted his cart, and with a last wary look over his shoulder, eased the donkey back into the traffic. By tomorrow, Chopra knew, the poor beast would be once again back in harness. He was fighting the tide.

  Yet, as he looked at the happy little elephant beside him, he knew that sometimes even an unwinnable battle was worth fighting. As Gandhi himself had once said: ‘The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.’

  ‘So,’ announced Ajay Rangoon, ‘this is what I have discovered.’

  He handed Chopra another sheaf of printouts. ‘These are the details of all the companies that hold stakes in Karma Holdings. Unfortunately, they are also all shell companies. The only individuals listed are nominee office bearers, people who have no actual control over the companies in question. The ultimate aim of this convoluted structure is to safeguard the anonymity of the true owner of Karma Holdings �
�� known as the Beneficial Owner – the person who benefits from this network of organisations.’

  ‘How do I identify this Beneficial Owner?’

  ‘The first step is to go back in time. I have tracked the evolution of this incredibly complex spiderweb of firms back to a handful of shell companies with the oldest incorporation dates. However, there is a problem. These companies have all been red-flagged.’

  ‘Red-flagged?’ echoed Chopra.

  ‘Yes. Ever since the government crackdown on shell companies, a system of red-flagging has been in effect. Whenever we come across a corporate entity that may potentially be a front for illegal activity we red-flag it on our system. Such companies are then automatically referred to the Serious Fraud Investigation Office who follow up and decide whether to shut the company down, and, possibly, prosecute those behind it.’ He grinned. ‘It just so happens that my uncle is a senior investigator there. I suspect that you would like more information about these red-flagged companies?’

  ‘You suspect correctly.’

  ‘I will give him a call. Their offices are not far from here. He will help you. He is a helpful man. He even got me this job here. I wanted to be a rock star, but he thought I should have a real career first.’

  The Serious Fraud Investigation Office building was located on Mahatma Gandhi Road in Fort, barely a twenty-minute walk from the MCA offices. Feeling the need to stretch his legs – and those of his ward – Chopra chose to navigate the early evening crowds washing along the esplanade on foot, rather than drive.

  The route proved to be a boisterous exhibition of modern life in the city.

  They passed a crowded Burger King sandwiched cosily between a Louis Vuitton store and a small art gallery. A minor soap opera star was shooting an advert outside the Burger King, holding an enormous burger to her mouth as camera bulbs flashed and popped. Starving beggars looked on from the sidelines. Clumps of foreign tourists – sporting expressions ranging from stunned to bemused – wandered through the thronged streets, pursued by lepers, street urchins, flute players, eunuchs and hawkers selling everything from samosas to bootleg books to stolen car parts. Skyscrapers towered on either side of the road: the Abu Dhabi National Bank, the Life Insurance Corporation of India. Gridlocked traffic greeted them at Veer Nariman Road under the disapproving gaze of the statue of Sir Edulji Wacha, another of the Parsee grandees who had helped found the Indian National Congress, the party Gandhi would go on to lead.

  The SFIO offices were yards from the Cross Maidan Garden. Chopra left Ganesha to have a trot around the neatly manicured space, paying a watchman to keep an eye on him, and then wandered across the road.

  Enquiring at the lobby, he was quickly directed up to the third floor and the office of the second Ajay Rangoon he had encountered that day.

  Rangoon Senior was a quite different animal to his nephew.

  An overweight, sloppy-looking individual, he looked at Chopra from a pair of droopy, deep-set eyes, an air of world-weary cynicism emanating from his every pore. His shirt was untucked, his collar flung open, buttons undone halfway down his chest revealing an off-white vest. He clutched a burger in one hand. Chilli sauce was smeared over his chin and had dripped on to his shirt.

  He waved Chopra into a seat, then flopped down into a chimpanzee slouch behind a desk covered in dunes of paper and manila files. ‘My nephew explained what you were looking for. My hourly fee is five hundred rupees.’

  Chopra raised an eyebrow. ‘I thought this was your job.’

  Rangoon waved at the paper on his desk. ‘That is my job. You are not the police. You are asking me to expend my time helping you with a private investigation, presumably one for which you are being paid.’

  Chopra nodded. ‘Your point is well made.’

  ‘Cash, please. In advance.’ He bit off a mouthful of burger, and chewed it with bovine passivity.

  Chopra reached into his wallet, and passed over three hundred rupees. ‘That is all I have. You may bill me for the rest.’

  Satisfied, Rangoon leaned back. ‘Shell companies are a cancer in our economy – for decades I have watched them choke the machinery of our financial system. Thankfully, we now have the resources to begin tackling them.’

  ‘Why has it taken so long?’

  ‘You’re forgetting, Chopra, that many of our esteemed politicos have used them for years, to hide their own ill-gotten gains. They are everywhere. I myself have shut down a thousand of them in the past year alone. I once led a raid on a single building in Dadar where more than two hundred “offices” were registered. Most consisted of a single cupboard-sized room, with a padlock that hadn’t been touched in years. These companies exist largely on paper, fronts for their true backers.’ He set down a printout in front of Chopra, a complex maze of interconnected boxes. Inside the boxes were the names of various corporations, including those Rangoon Junior had narrowed down as the primary shell companies that owned Karma Holdings. ‘These companies control everything. And they in turn are controlled by one man. He is not a director, an employee, or even a listed shareholder – those are all nominee office bearers, just like your man John Reddy. The person you are looking for – the Beneficial Owner – is the man who truly runs this web of shell companies, and thus Karma Holdings. The puppet-master.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘His name is Om Kaabra. Once upon a time he was known as the Black Cobra. Have you heard of him?’

  Chopra shook his head.

  ‘Officially he is a businessman, a coconut oil exporter. Unofficially, he graduated from the Mumbai underworld. Low-level street rackets, extortion, that sort of thing. He did a stint in jail for passport fraud. After that, he decided, like many of his contemporaries, to diversify. Began to dabble in the property market. And, by dabble, I mean extort properties from their owners at below market prices, collude with developers to build expensive new premises, and then sell on at a handsome profit. Unlike many of his peers, Kaabra has been extraordinarily successful at it. What’s more he has managed to keep a low profile. He only came to our attention a few years ago; we have been following his progress with keen interest since, though it has proved impossible to gather enough evidence to prosecute him. No one will testify against him, and he keeps himself far removed from the more unsavoury aspects of the business. And, as you can see, he has become a master at disguising his involvement via these shell outfits.’

  ‘Where is he based?’

  ‘To be frank, we don’t know. We think Delhi, but he has properties around the country. We don’t have the manpower to track his whereabouts. Besides, Karma Holdings is just one of the many front companies he uses. He has different ones in different cities. Kaabra is a smart operator, he knows not to put all his eggs in one basket.’

  ‘Do you know of his links with the BMC? Specifically, a Geeta Lokhani?’

  Rangoon shook his head. ‘The BMC is an enormous organisation. It is not within our remit to investigate them – that would be a matter for the CBI. But it would not surprise me that officials there are in Kaabra’s pay. They are hardly a bastion of integrity, and a man like Kaabra knows how to grease the wheels of corruption.’

  ‘What about a man called Cyrus Zorabian? Parsee industrialist, murdered in the city three months ago. Have you come across him in any of your investigations?’

  Rangoon dredged his memory. ‘No. The name has not cropped up.’

  Chopra scraped back his chair. ‘You have been most helpful.’

  Rangoon took another enormous bite of his burger. ‘Where shall I send the bill?’ he said, flashing a craggy smile.

  Run off the road

  Darkness had fallen by the time they returned to the van.

  As he drove back north, towards home, Chopra’s mind whirled with possibilities. Old policeman’s reflexes snapped and crackled through him as he considered all that he had recently learned.

  Kaabra was not a name he was familiar with, but he knew the type.

  During his years on the for
ce Chopra had had numerous run-ins with the Mumbai underworld. For decades, they had practically run the city, until a major crackdown in the late nineties had seen many of them either shot dead – via specialist units such as Malini Sheriwal’s so-called Encounter Squad – or dispersed through citywide taskforces. Though their influence had waned, the old dons were far from a spent force. They had regrouped, retrenched and returned to the fray, although now most had the sense to maintain a low profile.

  In the ensuing vacuum low-level operators such as Kaabra had seized the opportunity to carve out their own shadowy empires.

  There was little doubt in Chopra’s mind that Kaabra was the man behind the murders of Arushi Kadam and Vijay Narlikar. Their killings had all the hallmarks of a gangland slaying. The two youngsters had worked for Kaabra’s front company, Karma Holdings, and had clearly done something to attract his ire. Chopra was also certain that Kaabra and the BMC official Geeta Lokhani were working together. Lokhani was no doubt being paid handsomely in order to smooth the path for Karma Holdings to acquire property via underhand means, and then to develop those properties for vast financial gain.

  But what was the link that tied them to Cyrus Zorabian?

  Cyrus, facing bankruptcy, had clearly got into bed with the wrong people.

  Had he sensed an opportunity when Geeta Lokhani first approached him to raise funds for the Vashi slum redevelopment project? Had something subsequently gone awry, causing Kaabra to order Cyrus’s death? Cyrus had visited Karma Holdings on a number of occasions – had something happened there that had effectively sealed not only his fate, but also the fates of Arushi Kadam and Vijay Narlikar?

  Questions, questions, and no answers.

  The truth was that Chopra could not yet link Cyrus’s killing to Kaabra or Lokhani. The Parsee industrialist’s murder might be completely unrelated to his dealings with the pair.